Monday, January 29, 2018

Christianity and Literature… Christianity and Flannery O’Connor rather.

In January, I took a two-week intensive course at the seminary. This seven-week class was given in two weeks. It’s titled, “Christianity and Literature.” The literature was selected writings from Flannery O’Connor. She is an American writer, a Southern writer, from the mid-twentieth century. Her writings are… original, or unique, and she likes it that way.

Her purpose for writing fiction is to reveal misconceptions that people have. She writes to reveal the overlooked sins people carry or even thrive on. And by the time the reader is finished with the story, the reader is left to question what just happened. She uses different tools of literature to make this possible. Shock. Tragedy. Heart-wrenching actions. Symbols. Though her characters are often crude, frayed and ill-educated, she uses the setting of the south and its morals and the things of the culture to reveal to the perfectionist the imperfect.

You can see Jesus working in a similar manner in Luke 18:9-14. The Scripture reads,

[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

No matter how hard the people try to put the world into a box that they can try to control, things of our humanness and the things in the world will bring in results that don’t fit into that box. These things can be God-pleasing. Some of it is not. We can try to get rid of what’s not God-pleasing, but the problem is, we will never get rid of it all. Our only hope is in the perfect life Jesus and his humanness in which he lived for us. (I can hear questions here in regards to how is Jesus both God and man. To that I leave you to read the Athanasian Creed.)

O’Conner states in a piece titled On Her Own Work, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.” What do you think about this claim? Is violence something Christians want to embrace? Remember, this is fiction. In fiction, using violence on a person humbles that person to come to the realization that they don’t have control anymore. They come to realize that they are in need of a savior. O’Conner has exercised this powerful tool in her writings.

O’Conner uses violence to reveal people’s fear of death. And death is bound to happen to everyone. No matter what philosophy or what kind of worldview or what kind of box of understanding a person believes in and holds on to, a person cannot live forever by using their own power alone. Death, which didn’t come into the world until the earth was cursed from Adam and Eve, is the result of living in a sinful world. Again, we can try to get rid of all the sin in the world, which doesn’t work, or we can learn how to live with both the evil and the good in the world.

Life is full of mystery. We can try to explain it away or just embrace the mystery. Maybe you can relate to this through the words of the Apostle Paul gave in his writing in Philippians 2:7-9 which reads,

[Jesus Christ] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

Jesus was crucified on the cross for us. That day when Jesus was given the punishment of death even though he did nothing to deserve it. All sin, even the ones we think are small are given the punishment of death. That is what we deserve. But Christ died for us. He died for us so that we may have eternal life.

O’Conner wouldn’t be quick to tell the end of the story with Jesus’s resurrection and his victory over death. She would let the sting of death settle with you for a few days as it would have for the disciples who were once proud followers of Christ who then had abandoned him. Like the disciples, she would let them wrestle with the question, “What had happened,” and “What have I done?”

The season of Lent is coming. In this season, the people feel their mortality, their humanness, their brokenness from the cursed world the most throughout the year. On Ash Wednesday, the church remembers, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.” Some fast during the season of Lent. And then there’s Good Friday when the worshiped Son of God is all of the sudden appearing powerless, rejected, and bearing the weight of the cursed world on his shoulders.

A seminary student is powerless in the direction the person is going to be sent. With most people, they have the power to choose what they wish to do with their degree. Not in the Masters of Divinity program. With the help of God, the school will send the students to the ministry where they think would be best placed for the student. The student then trusts that with the help of God this placement will be used for his glory in this cursed world. May God use wherever ministry I am going to be sent to for his glory.

God’s blessings,
Sylvan Finger